As everyone should know by now, the Friends of the Capital City Grange have ambitious plans to improve our basement level. After lots of planning and work, our grant application to the “Cultural Facilities Coalition” was approved in August, pledging 50% of the funding for our project. Other grants we’ve received, and generous donations from members of the Grange and dance communities have gotten a good start to the “matching funds” we need to go with the big grant. We’ve just gotten approval of a no-interest “bridge loan” from the VT State Grange to finance the construction until we get the project completed–because we don’t get the big grant until the work is successfully completed.
New bathrooms are the most obvious amenity of the updated basement, and will be a big improvement–a bigger space with 4 uni-sex private stalls, a spacious shared hand-washing space with a new water-fountain, plus a separate ADA “accessible” bathroom. That part of the project is planned for next spring, assuming the fundraising goals are met–see the article about the updated website for a link to donate directly!
The FCCGH decided that there was no reason to wait to get started with the other parts of the project, so we hired John Mallery to rebuild the fire exits from the basement. The picture below right shows the re-worked fire exit stairs at the NW corner of the building, which lead to a ground-level fire exit door. We have new storage space upstairs over the fire stairs. We have a new “vestibule” around the stairs which go from the lower level to the main Hall. And we’ve gotten preliminary approval from the Fire Marshal for an improvement in our basement level occupancy from 49 to 100–and expect a bit more soon, when he finishes his calculations. All of these are important steps forward to making us an attractive space for community use!

Looking down the new stairs at the NW corner of the Grange Hall, see the difference between old and new!Fire egress improvements: fire-rated vestibule at the bottom of the basement stairsThe door in the vestibule is held open with an electro-magnet; if a fire is detected, it will close automatically.

About the end of last-year’s heating season, we were warned that our furnace burner was on its last legs, and we would likely have to replace the entire furnace. Scary stuff! We were very lucky to have a new member join us, who was able to do a building survey, and to locate and install a new, more efficient burner in the existing furnace. Bill Chidsey has about 40 years of HVAC experience, and has a special interest in increasing energy efficiency. Between the more efficient burner, and the programmable thermostat, we are already saving money on fuel oil–so much so that I got a phone call from our heating oil supplier, asking me to check if our burner was working, since we were using so little oil!

We’ve made some great strides in the last year, increasing our visibility in the community, improving our energy efficiency, and improving our facilities as a community Hall.
At the end of this busy year, we thank the many people who have pitched in to get these projects started–and have stuck with them to get them done.
What is so important about these changes? It’s pretty simple–we are going to have a hard time surviving if we don’t improve our cash-flow. We have been losing about $2,000 per year over the last several years–as costs increase for heating, taxes, plowing and sanding, our rentals have not increased to keep pace. The good news you will find in this and the other Grange Notes is that we are making changes that will affect both income and cost sides of the ledger–how would you like to pitch in to help us make them happen?